Book Reviwed: Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information by Vlatko Vedral

Information in the cosmic design The author of this book suggests that the physical reality we observe and experience in everyday life may be explained by the processing of information. Information is more fundamental than the laws of physics, which explains the behavior of matter and energy in spacetime, and entropy and the second law of thermodynamics play an important role. Disorder (physical entropy) increases with time according to the second law of thermodynamics. And this is closely related to Shannon’s entropy (self-information). The increasing complexity of life is driven by the overall increase in disorder in the universe. Systems that exploit disorder are called Maxwell demons. All living systems are Maxwell demons and so are some non-living systems like computers. Computers do calculations using electricity (to do work) and then produce heat. All Maxwell demons work this way, they collect information, and they use information to do work. That is why a living system can live, grow, and reproduce where in a significant amount of order is required to maintain a living cell. Entropy of a system is proportional to the surface area of that system which is known as the holographic universe. According to this, the information of our universe (that has three-dimensional space) is encoded in a two-dimensional space, a black hole serves as a good example to illustrate holographic principle. This is a small book of 225 pages that reads flawlessly, and the subject matter is very well explained. Highly recommended.